Cisco’s latest addition to their Webex Room Series has arrived. Introducing the Cisco Webex Room USB! This new product comes in at the lower price end of their Room portfolio and is suited for small huddle spaces that hold 2-5 people. The device itself is a rectangular shaped bar with a 4K camera, microphones and speakers that can be mounted on or below a television screen or monitor.

Cisco is targeting this device at companies who are pushing BYOD in an effort to streamline productivity and suit how their employees want to work. Let’s take a look at the specifications and benefits of this new device.

The Webex Room USB allows employees to turn up to the meeting room with just a laptop and instantly begin sharing documents onto a presentation screen. This is useful because it prevents situations where you can’t find the cable or your laptop has a different port when all you want to do is show a document to those around you. One less potential hiccup means your employees will work more productively.

If you follow Cisco news you will have likely heard of the concept of Cognitive Collaboration before (if not, you can read about it here). Essentially what it is, is the idea of AI-driven collaboration tools that are continuously improving the way we work. It’s a very exciting topic and the possibilities are limitless.

When it comes to the Cisco Webex Room USB, Cognitive Collaboration is built into the core of the device. A couple of examples of this is the best overview feature. Wherever you are sitting or standing in the room, the camera will focus the frame on you to provide the best experience to whoever you are meeting with. You can freely move around and the camera will track you as you go.

Cognitive Collaboration also allows the Cisco Webex Room USB to offer Audio Fencing. This is a feature where the microphones will automatically detect sound that is within the room and sound outside the room, separate the two, and construct a “fence” between them. This improves audio quality greatly and wouldn’t be possible without AI and Cognitive Collaboration.

The Cisco Webex Room USB doesn’t only feature fantastic microphones, but the speakers are impressive also. Cisco has produced a video demonstrating the quality of the speakers on this device compared with a similar product from a competing vendor in the industry. As you can see the results are incomparable and Cisco’s quality has come up trumps again.

In a recent collaboration between Cisco and Microsoft, both vendors made changes to allow the others’ meeting software to function on their video hardware. This means that the Webex Room USB can be used as a camera and microphone even if your business uses all Microsoft tools. The ability to use any meeting software on this new product opens Cisco’s fantastic video solutions up to a much wider audience.

Digital signage as a feature allows you to set the Webex Room USB to show any image or information of your choice on the connected display. This is useful to give information to visitors for example. To enable this feature, you must set it up through the Webex Admin Portal. Watch our tutorial on this here.

One of the most valuable features of the Cisco Webex Room USB is the distortion correction that the device is capable of. The device features a 120-degree FOV fisheye lens which is great for meeting in small areas but produces strange-looking raw footage. However, with the Cisco Webex Room USB, the raw footage is reframed in real-time to straighten the edges and fix any distortion issues. You can see an example of this below. It’s important to note that none of the vendors competing in this area offers this feature to the extent that the Webex Room series does.

There are several different factors to consider when asking yourself this question. What is your budget? How large is the room? Are you currently using Webex? Our opinion is that as long as the Webex Room USB fits your budget, then it is the best option in terms of audio/video quality and ease of use. Other vendors may be cheaper, but the experience will not come close to what Cisco can offer.

If you are already using the Webex platform then we would recommend paying a bit more and deploying the Webex Room Kit Mini as you will benefit more from what the Mini can offer. If your business does not use Cisco collaboration or Webex then the Room USB is the perfect starting product as it doesn’t require a Webex subscription. After all, you can always upgrade to a Room Kit Mini whenever you like to receive the Touch 10 and the additional functionality that comes with it.